Humorous instances in the flights

It’s a well-known fact that cabin crew develops a personality where he / she is surrounded by different classes of people with multiple demands, with different back grounds, varying in different cultures and at the same time they have respond to them with equal propensity, keeping in mind the rules and regulations and limited resources available at 40000 feet.

Obviously in this melee his/ her own background is lost in the oblivion, what is present, is what it matters and how expeditiously and efficiently and amicably/ beautifully can be sorted out lies in the hands of the beholder.

In flight I always created and enjoyed the environment of joyness and happiness around me and other crew members and with the passengers. The sign language which we shared was a matter of utter confidentiality and we derived immense pleasure. It’s an art to bring smile on the faces of the people, whether it’s a crew member or a passenger. The idea is to turn the situation into a lighter shade and if any situation is there which could be alarming has to be thwarted out quietly in a subtle way.

Once in Delhi/ Kathmandu flight, we were serving beer and the cans were faulty, in the sense they were, may be pressurised more and while opening the beer was coming out like a fountain, spoiling the clothes of the passengers. We could do nothing except offering apologies and giving them ample number of tissue papers to the control the damage as much as possible. There were group of passengers, I think from Mexico and language was the barrier, but communication was still going on. I was explaining the possibility of beer splurging on them, but they still insisted on taking one.

All passengers were in merry mood and laughing away at the instances of beer drenching them some way. We were also laughing along with them; their reactions were too humorous and funny. we finished the service and was squaring up the galley and at that point a gentleman walked in and was demanding something in action? What? I could not understand.

Then he said by actions ZEERZEEE and pointing his hand towards his head /hair. After a while I could understand that he wanted a hair dryer. I said, no! not possible, not available. But for what? I, enquired. For which he responded and directed my attention towards his pant – actually towards his groin area which was wet due to spillage of the beer from the beer cans. So, he wanted the drier to dry his pants! Wow! I replied to -it would do more harm than good, directing hot air to his crotch area may /would result in expansion of something else and that would be out of control, and we have no remedies for that. This all was conveyed in actions to him, in total actions and sign language, naturally the crew members around and he himself burst out in laughing and rushed back the cabin. He must have explained his group members in their language and whole cabin was in splitter of laughter. while getting down also they were saying something funny in their language and laughing away to glory.

So, to come to think of, a deficient quality of beer cans were converted into a laughing and hilarious episode, passengers and crew equally enjoyed.

Sometime cabin crew can be very naughty in flight, and they do take advantage of the situation or to say exploit it. It was Boeing Aircraft, and we were flying on tourist length of flight, like Jaipur or Khajuraho .. There were group of Japanese tourists, and the atmosphere was quite lively. I was doing some artwork with the thread and needle, sitting on my crew seat. One of the passengers came in the galley asking for some favour, something he wanted from the hostess who was standing in the galley and was attending to him. Japanese are known to be very humble and courteous, and they bow down many times during the conversation. So, the conversation was going on and he was bowing every one minute. since I was sitting on the crew seat his bowing down was exposing his back side in front of me. I could not resist and poked needle slightly in his back side, it was thick one and not very sharp also. But the effect was tremendous, he ran to the cabin shouting “operation ““operation “and we were just laughing at his expressions, he also amused as was told to us by the tour operator. (Those days there used to be tour operators, translators for language, like Japanese, French, German etc). Incidentally the other girl who was in the galley was to attend a party in the evening and met same group of people and again the same incident was narrated, now in Japanese with lots of added colours. . Not that every passenger gets a feel of/ by the hostess, how does it matter if it was via a needle.

Once I was travelling as a passenger from Zurich to Paris and was talking to the hostess at the rear galley. In general, about the duty times and international sectors flights routine etc. Suddenly pair of young girl and boy came and locked themselves in the toilet. We were just, dumb struck, looking like an observer and were quite amazed. The hostess knocked at the door, they didn’t respond, she tried again, no response, finally she called the steward explaining to him the situation. He came, repeated the procedure again, no response. By this time good 15/20 minutes had passed. He said then, okay !! now they will come out soon, job must be over. And actually, they came out hurriedly and went to their seats. That was one hell of an incident. In general, we are trained to open the doors of the toilet in case of emergency, but this was exception where the emergency was of different nature. So , be it !

Actually, come to think of it, there would be innumerable number of incidences to jot it down. Every flight there used to be some issue, not always funny, at times we used to have complaints as well. normally we used to write it down in our diary for the purpose of reference. There could some enquiry later on. Today when I am writing, only humorous and funny and jovial incidences crop up immediately. See our brains are trained to remember happy things in life. Correct! So be happy and enjoy life like a celebration.